Chapter 8
Amanda sat in the darkness of her own apartment. Not a single light was on. The only hint of light came from a streetlamp outside; a narrow golden beam cut through a small gap in the curtains across her living room floor. She'd pulled her legs up to her chest with her arms wrapped around her knees, wearing only a pair of shorts and a black tank top. Her blonde hair fell in messy strands down her shoulders and a a cigarette balanced precariously between her fingers. It had been forever since she last smoked but tonight she felt weak.
A soft stumbling sound in the bedroom made her look up. The door was open and a slender figure appeared, dressed in black skinny jeans, a simple white button down shirt and a red leather jacket draped across an arm. Short cropped black spikey hair framed a round face and the silver nose ring was a striking feature.
"I gotta run. I've got an exam in like six hours," the young woman said with a quirky grin. She casually leaned against the kitchen counter. "I had fun though."
"Yeah," Amanda smiled absentmindedly, her body painfully remembering just how much fun they'd had. She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes as she looked up to her nameless companion. Yet another mistake to add to her list. "Me too."
"Your phone keeps ringing," the girl said as she showed the device to Amanda. She'd picked it up from the bedroom floor as she got dressed. Curious green eyes lingered on the blonde detective. "Who's Olivia? She keeps calling you, left like six voice mails. Is she your girlfriend?"
Amanda shrugged, an empty look in her blue eyes. "She's not my girlfriend…." She paused. "She's nothin'."
"Call me?" the black haired girl said as she walked to the door. She stepped out of the apartment and disappeared. Suddenly there was only silence.
Amanda let herself fall back onto the couch and raised her eyes up to the ceiling. The images from that night were blur. After Olivia left she went out. Found the nearest lesbian bar and ordered a beer, followed by a second and a third. The music was loud and judging from the crowd it was student night. Eyes met across a room, they shared a couple of dances before stumbling out of the bar in a mess of tangled lips. Names were never exchanged. It wasn't about the names. It was about the sex, that was all it was. Meaningless, no questions asked. Easy to forget everything else for as long as it lasted, easy to drown in something that could take the pain away long enough for Amanda to pretend nothing ever happened between her and Olivia.
With a sigh she stood up and picked up the phone the girl had left in the kitchen. She checked her call list and saw two missed calls from Nick, nine from Olivia and seven voicemails. Amanda heaved a sigh as she pressed the button to listen to her messages and tears welled up in her eyes when she heard Olivia's voice. When she heard the older woman say that the 911 rapist had been captured and was on his way to the station, she hung up. The strangling feeling in her chest only grew tighter and she put the phone down on the side, walked into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
~()~
Olivia arrived at the precinct at the same time a convoy of squad cars did. One of them had their perp in the back and she joined the uniformed officers as they dragged him out, his hands cuffed behind his back. For the first time Olivia got to have a look at his face and she made sure to remember it. This was the man who had tormented her from a distance for years, got under her skin in a way not many perps had done before. She wanted to look him in the eye and see him look back at her. His gaze found hers as the officers brought him into the building and Olivia felt sick to her stomach when he grinned.
When she walked into the squad room she found Nick at his desk. Fin stood by the coffee pot and her eyes scanned the room looking for Amanda. Her heart sank when she didn't see the blonde detective.
"Where's Rollins?" she asked. "I would have thought she wanted to see this."
"Did you call her?" Nick asked.
"Yeah," Olivia answered, a hint of irritation lacing her voice. An unnerving feeling crept up on her as her gaze fixed on Amanda's empty desk. It looked haunting. She didn't understand what Amanda hadn't answered the phone. "I called several times. Left voice mails. She hasn't returned any of my calls."
Nick leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. His dark eyes were fixed on his partner. He had noticed the relationship between Amanda and Olivia had changed since they returned from Atlanta. Both women seemed to be sharper and more on edge than before they left but he'd put it down to the case getting to them. Now that he watched the concern spread across Olivia's face as she looked at the empty desk, he wasn't so sure.
"What happened between you and Rollins?" he asked once Fin was out of hearing range. Olivia shot him a dark look. "Just calling it like I see it. Something's up."
"Even if there was, it's none of your business," Olivia reminded him and grabbed the file of her desk. She turned her back on Amanda's empty seat and forced the thoughts of the blonde detective out of her head. She had a job to do and she couldn't let own emotions cloud her judgment. She looked back at Nick, the concern gone from her face and her brown eyes dark and filled with anger. "You ready to nail this guy's balls?"
~()~
Five hours. Five painstaking hours in which she listened to every disgusting detail he was willing to share with her. He walked her through every rape, describing the way his victim's cries smothered in the back of their throat to the taste of their tears and the smell of their fear. He described in gruesome detail how he raped them, leaving nothing to her imagination. The fire in his eyes ignited as he talked, his voice the only sound in the room. They were the eyes of a monster, a sadist who got off on reliving every memory all over again. Whenever he paused she could feel and hear the heavy pounding of her heart in her ears. The taste of the bile in the back of her throat grew stronger the longer she looked at him. His was a face Olivia Benson wouldn't forget for the rest of her life.
When she slammed the door to the interrogation room behind her, Olivia rested her back against the two way window and ran her hands through her hair. She felt sick. She felt disgusted. She felt like she needed to shower for a week and it still wouldn't be enough to wash the dirt from her skin. Tired brown eyes met Nick's. He looked the same.
"He's going away for a very long time, Liv," he promised her. "And his cellmates are going to love him up in Rikers."
Olivia sighed. "He enjoyed every second of that interrogation. He wanted us to squirm, to feel sickened by everything he told us."
"He's sick," Nick answered. "But we've caught him now." He patted his partner on her arm. "You can finally close that case file now."
Olivia heaved a sigh as she shot a last glance through the window behind her. James Patrick Lambert. The 911 rapist now had a face and a name. A man in his late thirties with dirty blonde hair and steel blue eyes that reminded her off the eyes you saw in a doll. They were empty unless he spoke of his crimes. It seemed that the memory of what he had done was the only thing that made him feel alive.
She looked back at Nick. "I can close this one," she said as she slowly walked away. "But there will always be others."
When Olivia walked back into the squad room the first thing she noticed was Amanda's empty desk. It hadn't changed from earlier and she turned to find Fin walking out of Cragen's office. He met her gaze.
"Where's your partner?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Don't know. Called her a couple of times but got her voicemail. Cragen's asked me to check in on her."
Olivia grabbed her coat of the back of her chair. "Mind if I come with?"
The two of them left the squad room and stepped into the elevator. Once the doors had slid shut Fin turned to look at the older detective. He had known Olivia for more than ten years and he considered her one of his closest friends but Amanda was his partner. It didn't matter if he had known Olivia longer, the relationship between partners was strong.
"What's goin' on?" he wanted to know.
Olivia rolled her eyes in irritation. "What is it with all of you? Why does everyone think something's going on?"
"Look, somethin' happened while you two were gone. Rollins hasn't been herself since she came back and frankly, neither have you."
"Excuse me?" Olivia asked, arching her eyebrows in surprise as she turned to look at Fin. "Since when do you have the right to stick your nose in my business?"
"If it involves Amanda it is my business," Fin replied. "What happened?"
The elevator doors opened and they had reached the precinct lobby. Olivia hesitated before stepping out and turned to look at Fin. "Believe me when I say you really don't want to know, Fin. I don't want to put you into a difficult position."
"Amanda didn't turn up for work and doesn't answer her calls. I think it's safe to say things are already pretty difficult."
Olivia didn't answer and instead just walked out of the precinct. Fin followed and they got into his car. He resisted asking any more questions but Olivia's facial expressions told him there was a lot more that the brunette wasn't telling him. Ever since her ordeal with Lewis, Olivia had changed. He couldn't blame her. Nobody would be the same after what she went through. But it seemed that what happened to her had a knock-on effect on all of them. It had spiralled all of them out of control in one way or another. The fact that Lewis had managed to get to Olivia had left them all feeling their own vulnerability. It was a frightening realisation for everyone and not everybody coped with it very well.
Twenty-five minutes later they pulled up outside Amanda's building. Fin got out of the car and checked the parking lot. "Her truck's gone."
"Amanda, where the hell are you?" Olivia sighed as they walked into the building and asked the super for the spare key. He seemed a little surprised to see the two detectives but obliged without question.
"I don't know what you've come here for. You're not going to find her in her apartment," he said as he followed the two detectives to Amanda's apartment and Olivia turned around.
"Why's that?" she asked.
"I helped her load her stuff into her truck earlier this morning. Looked like she was going on vacation," the super answered as he unlocked the door. "She's a cop, right? Is she in any kind of trouble?"
"No, no trouble," Fin answered as he carefully pushed the door open and revealed Amanda's apartment. Ir was abandoned. The furniture was all neatly arranged and the windows had been opened to let in the fresh air. The silence was strangely eerie. "Did you say you saw her leave this morning?"
The super nodded. "Yeah. She paid next month's rent and told me to cancel the lease after that. When I asked what to do with her stuff she said I could put it in storage or give it away to charity." He looked from Fin to Amanda. "She didn't look like she was gonna come back anytime soon."
Olivia walked through Amanda's apartment. She had only been here last night but it felt different now. She could feel the emptiness. She crossed the room and opened the door to the bedroom. The bed was neatly made with the comforter pulled straight and the pillows plumped up. The window was open in this room too. The door to the bathroom was slightly ajar. Any toiletries, toothbrushes and other bits and pieces were gone. Her breath hitched as she hesitantly opened the wardrobe to find it empty. The chest of drawers and the bedside table were the same. The place had been cleared out.
"She left," Olivia said softly as she walked back unto the living room and found Fin standing in the kitchen. The super had disappeared and the spare key lay on the counter. "She packed her bags and walked out."
Fin pointed at a piece of paper stuck onto the middle of the fridge, held in place by a magnet shaped like an apple with the bright red letters NYC on it.
"She used to keep her times for meetings on here. She said she would look at it every morning before going to work, just in case," he said as he picked the folded pieces of paper of the fridge. He showed it to Olivia. Her name was written in small capitals on the light blue paper. "Now there's only this."
Olivia's hands trembled as she took the piece of paper from Fin and slowly unfolded it. She recognised Amanda's handwriting immediately and her eyes scanned the couple of lines that had been written down. With a shock she realised they were the lyrics they had heard on the radio back in Georgia and she bit down on her lip.
"….My heart can't take the beating, not having you to hold. A small voice keeps repeating deep inside my soul, it says I can't keep pretending I don't love you anymore…."
Unexpected tears welled up in Olivia's eyes as she looked around the abandoned apartment one last time. She then looked at Fin who was looking back at her. Without asking she knew he knew. He just nodded, his eyes never letting go of hers. Her hands still shook as she gave him the piece of paper. When he read the lines scribbled down in Amanda's handwriting the final pieces fell into place.
"I didn't handle it very well," Olivia admitted when Fin looked up. He didn't judge her.
"Where do you think she could have gone?" he asked.
Olivia pointed at the piece of paper. "The one place where she heard that song, the place where all of this began," she answered and brushed a stray tear out of the corner of her eye. "Atlanta. She's gone home."